Ruth Delacourt

Set in 1990s upstate New York, Becky navigates a family system that appears to function well. Routines are stable, authority seems benign, and affection is practical. Her firefighter father comes and goes while her mother discourages questions. However, when disruption enters their lives, it does so indirectly, and the family continues as if nothing has changed. 

By her teenage years, Becky is drawn into substance abuse, leading her into a desperate life that her family struggles to understand. When she eventually collapses, the harsh truth arrives without explanation. The family adapts by reorganizing their dynamics rather than reckoning with the realities of their situation. 

Years later, Rebecca finds herself in Paris, happily married and working for NYU. With children and the life she has chosen, she enjoys the control that distance provides. The unresolved past seems to fade quietly into the background. 

However, as the mid-2000s unfold, the gap begins to close. Emails arrive at inopportune times; mobile phones render everyone reachable; early video calls breach time zones. Contact resumes, dragging along the unspoken hierarchies of the family system she thought she had left behind. The family secrets that were never clarified begin to emerge within the life she believed she had secured. 

Moving between the world of 1990s America and the European life she constructs in the 2000s, 'The Heartbreakers' is a poignant exploration of addiction and complicated family relationships. This literary fiction reveals the subtle mechanisms of harm and poses vital questions about what we carry forward when explanations are absent - and what it means when the place we thought we escaped still seeks a claim on who we have become. 

Ruth Delacourt's 'The Heartbreakers' captures these themes with profound insight, making it a significant addition to the genre of literary fiction about family secrets and complicated family relationships.